Typically, network traffic management systems attempt to avoid congestion by applying simple traffic management rules to the types of network traffic, such as the Radio Area Network (RAN) Congestion Awareness Function (RCAF) incorporated into Release 14 of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard. Frequently, these traffic management rules simply target predetermined types of traffic such as peer-to-peer (P2P) or the like that are most likely to cause congestion.
In other cases, traffic management rules may provide for traffic management during peak hours by limiting bandwidth per user during these peak times. These types of solutions can, in some cases, lower the Quality of Service (QoS) by affecting clients even when there is no actual congestion, restricting the clients from using bandwidth that would otherwise be available to them.
Additionally, the existing solutions may not even solve network congestion problems, because the enforcement policies are less than what is required to relieve congestion or fail to anticipate network congestion events. For example, there may be few or no heavy users or a low amount of low priority traffic, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) or bulk downloads, yet poorly targeted traffic management rules may cause the network to still experience congestion events.
It would, therefore, be beneficial to provide load management systems and methods that anticipate network congestion events and metrics by applying dynamic traffic management policies that accurately target sources of network congestion.